Under The Bridge - Music Video

Music Video

The music video for "Under the Bridge" was directed by Gus Van Sant, who photographed the band during their stay at The Mansion and provided the art direction for Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Van Sant knew Flea due to the bassist's role in his 1991 film My Own Private Idaho. The members of the band respected Van Sant both as a person and an artist and were elated when he agreed to direct the video for "Under the Bridge". Flea credits the video as "the thing that really made us break through the mainstream of American and worldwide pop culture".

The video was shot on the streets of Los Angeles and in a studio soundstage. It begins with Frusciante standing alone on a pedestal wearing a red-and-white-striped collared shirt, brown khaki pants, brown shoes, and a purple, green and multicolored chullo, with white stitched wolves in the middle. He plays a 1966 Ocean Turquoise Fender Jaguar behind the backdrop of a desert and an inverted cloudy sky. His shadow is projected on the left and right of where he stands. Frusciante's girlfriend of the time, Toni Oswald, selected his clothes that day. Frusciante remembers Van Sant's surprised, though favorable, reaction: "when I got Gus Van Sant was just looking at me and going 'God I'm so glad you wore that hat. I'm so glad you wore that shirt. Oh! Those pants are so great I'm so glad you wore those'". The video marks a significant shift in Frusciante's on-camera behavior; he no longer wished to jump around fervently as he had done in the band's prior music videos.

As Kiedis begins to sing he appears on camera bathed in purple light with blue fluorescent stars as a backdrop, surrounded by clouds. As the camera pans closer, an image of the skyline of Van Sant's home city, Portland, is superimposed from his chin downwards. Flea and drummer Chad Smith are then placed into the image while playing their instruments. Van Sant wanted superimposing to be a notable component in the overall theme of the video; the idea came from a project he worked on with novelist William S. Burroughs. The scenes in the studio are coupled with scenes of Kiedis walking the streets of LA, wearing a white T-shirt with "To Hell And Back" printed on the front; as he walks, the camera focuses on various people. This, according to Kiedis, was vital; he felt the studio portion alone would not convey enough emotion: "the first time we shot it was all in a studio and that didn't seem to capture everything we needed to capture. It needed more; it needed to be combined with an outdoor, streets-of-Los-Angeles thing". Towards the end, Kiedis is seen running down the Los Angeles River in slow motion; the background is a shot of an atomic bomb exploding. The video ends with various superimposed images of the band, followed by Frusciante playing alone on a pedestal—this time with an inverted shot of the ocean as the sky.

MTV placed the "Under the Bridge" video on heavy rotation. At the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards the Red Hot Chili Peppers led the nominations, which included the categories of "Best Video", "Best Group", and "Best Direction". "Under the Bridge" won the group "Breakthrough Video" and "Viewers Choice Best Video"; the band's video for "Give It Away" won "Best Art Direction". The video ranked eighth best in a poll dictated by the readers of the Chicago Tribune called "The Best and Worst of '92".